Heath Streak Retires, Ambrose Takes Over Captaincy

Heath Streak has confirmed this will be his final season at Edgbaston and that he will not be returning to County cricket in 2008.

Commenting on the news Chief Executive, Colin Povey said: "Streaky has been a magnificent ambassador for the game of cricket and he has always given his all for the Club. It has been a privilege to work with him and everyone at Edgbaston wishes him, Nadine and their family all the very best for the future."

Heath himself said: "It has been a difficult decision to call time on my career here in England. Edgbaston is a special place to play and I am proud to have been able to call myself a Bear. I still intend to maintain an involvement in cricket in some capacity whilst travelling less and spending more time with my family. I am determined to finish the season strongly myself and I hope that the team can put together some good performances to see me off in style."

Heath played 65 Test Matches and 189 One Day Internationals for Zimbabwe and captained the side for two years. He also captained Warwickshire during 2005 and 2006. In all he has taken 102 wickets and scored 1130 runs in his career with the Bears.

Meanwhile, Tim Ambrose has been awarded the captaincy for the remainder of the season while Darren Maddy heads off to South Africa for the Twenty20 World Cup. Tim captained the side yesterday at Northamptonshire as Darren sustained an ankle injury during the Lancashire Lightning match on Saturday.

Tim has had a great year behind the stumps and has been performing well with the bat scoring a personal best of 251* at Worcestershire in May. Tim is top of the Bears championship averages for 2007 with 53.06 and he has been scoring consistently in the one day competitions.

Tim is delighted with the news: "It is a great honour to captain the Club while Darren is on international duty. We have a tough couple of games coming up. We will need to be a strong unit and put up a fight right up to the end of the season. I will be looking to follow Darren and lead by example. I have the team behind me and I look forward to leading them out on Thursday."